Now

This page was last edited on March 8, 2026

The build of the "Jiass" network rack has stalled owing to the lack of available funds. I need to wait until I can afford to purchase two "Fullband FB4X4MINIDOME antennas" for the "Aerag" antenna array, and two "Protectli Vault Pro VP6650 6 Port" nodes for the "Greasane" firewall server. I currently don't know how long it'll take before I can finally get these last pieces of hardware. Asid from that I also need a bunch of 1m CAT6A UTP Patch Cables, which I'm currently researching as I want reliable patch cables.

Reading

I'm still reading the "Network Warrior" by Gary A. Donahue, occasionally, in the Thorium Reader app on one of my Linux workstations, in braille – and I'm enjoying it – so I haven't gotten around to loading the book on my HIMS SensePlayer to listen to it instead.

On the other hand, I haven't even started "Networking For Dummies" by Doug Lowe, yet, so I've just popped it back on my digital bookshelf for the time being. I will look at reading it when I finish the "Network Warrior".

My main focus has been on reading "The Mikrotik RouterOS WorkBook: Learn RouterOS From Scratch" by David Gonzalez Herrera. It's the first of eight books I've got about setting up MikroTik equipment. I'm particularly interesting in learning how to configure the nodes from the command line interface, rather than WebFig.

I could only find digital copies of these MikroTik books on Amazon Kindle, and there is no accessible way to read Kindle books on Linux, including the Kindle Web App. So I am reading these books on the Kindle App on my iPad with speech and braille output.

I finished listening to "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet" by Katie Hafner, and Matthew Lyon, which I was listening to on the Audible app on my iPhone, in the evenings. Now I'm listening to "Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution" by Fred Vogelstein.

Working on

Even though the build of the "Jiass" network rack has stalled, I'm still able to work through the "The Mikrotik RouterOS WorkBook: Learn RouterOS From Scratch" by David Gonzalez Herrera, and gain hands on experience with one of the MikroTik CRS418-8P-8G-2S+RM in the rack

The intention is, over time, to learn every aspect on how to configure a MikroTik CRS properly with RouterOS from the CLI, so that I can configure it as a core router, an edge router, a border router, or configure it as a Layer 2 switch by setting up bridging and VLANs to manage traffic without routing capabilities, or configure it to function as a Layer 3 switch, allowing it to handle routing tasks in addition to switching.

In the Server Room I'm setting up the "Meayll" 8U data rack which has a Synology DS218j NAS, and Synology DS220+ NAS on a rack shelf. I'm configuring them both to be accessed via a SSH session. One is going to be setup as a knowledge base with vimwiki. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the other one for now, but since I have them I will use them both until they reach their EOL (End Of Life), then I will replace them with a server running TrueNAS in the "Twoaie" server rack.

Reading

Working on

Archive